Ever The Hero
by AlinaLotus
Summary: And she has given up, now, given up on him and his ideals and everything that Jack Shephard has ever stood for.


**Set after Jack and co leave the island. Pre season 5. AU. Warnings are slight language and substance/alcohol abuse. **

She is dizzy. It could be from the alcohol, from the pills--but mostly, she thinks (although her thoughts are blurred lines with no beginning and no end and no existence anyway) it's from his lies.

---

She always knew that the men in her life--Edmund and Goodwin and Jack and Ben, all of them--would break her. They would build her up and watch her fall and crumble into nothingness. She never cared, before. Until Jack. Until now, now that she is without him..

But she's invested too much of herself into Jack, and he's let her down, and he's abandoned her.

She thinks that Kate probably made a lovely bride. (the bitterness burns in her mouth and she doesn't know if it's from the alcohol or the knowledge that Jack won't keep his promise)

---

She doesn't know how much longer she can keep going on like this, getting drunk and stoned and living on the haze of a reality that may or may not exist, but it's all she can do to keep her heart beating, keep her blood pumping.

She's alone now, but she's always been alone.

(she hates that Jack once made her whole)

---

When she sees him as he's getting out of her shower she doesn't know if it's a dream or if it's real. But everything has ceased to be real to Juliet anymore.

"It's you, isn't it?" Juliet says, confused, but then Jack comes closer and she can smell him--all salt (like tears) and sand (hot sand, being thrust into hot sand and his beard is rough between her legs), and she knows it's him.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Juliet thinks Jack has probably uttered this phrase more than any other in his entire life.

"Why are you saying this?" Juliet asks, and the bottle slips a little in her hands, but she catches it in time and takes a sip.

"I wanted to save you."

"What's that?" Juliet points to Jack's hand, where a silver wedding band is. "You married her, didn't you?"

Jack only nods, because there is nothing else to do; he acknowledges, with that tilt of his head, that he has failed her.

"You lied." Juliet says. It's not an accusation, just a statement. Juliet is beyond accusations, and she is too (drunk) tired for anything but the truth.

"I do love you."

"Liar." Juliet thinks that Jack lies better than anybody she's ever met, almost better than herself.

"I had to marry her." Jack tries a different road. "Kate couldn't do it alone, not without me."

"Ever the hero." Juliet raises the bottle to her lips again, and tries to look away from the naked man in front of her, but it's like a car wreck, and Jack has always been just so pretty in his pain, so tragically beautiful. He is the same man that left her, that jumped in a helicopter and she didn't see for months (it could be years, because she feels aged and exhausted and stretched much too thin), and his body calls to her and speaks to her and begs for her.

"I didn't ask to be the hero." Jack says, and Juliet knows it's the truth, but it doesn't matter because Jack Shephard was fated to be the hero since he was a little boy taking punches for his friends.

"Your promises, Jack," she says, and she is swaying in and out, waves of blue and red and purple swirling through her vision, "mean as much to me as this does to Kate." She lifts his left hand by his ring and drops it, letting it slam onto the condensation-soaked counter.

And she has given up, now, given up on him and his ideals and everything that Jack _fucking _Shephard has ever stood for.

(she really wishes that he would've proved her wrong, that just once Jack would really come through with the promises that he handed out like porno leaflets in Vegas, so cheap and vulgar and disgusting)

She turns to leave, but Jack pulls on her wrist. "Take this." She says, handing him the bottle, "and don't come back until you're ready to save me."

"You never wanted to be saved, Juliet Burke."

Juliet pauses at the door, her back to him and her eyes slammed shut. "Only by you, Jack. I only wanted to be saved by you."

And it is painful and Juliet always knew that it would be, because from the first day she saw Jack behind a glass wall in a dank Dharma station, she knew he would always choose Kate.

(the bitterness burns in her mouth and she doesn't know if it's from the alcohol or the knowledge that Jack won't keep his promise)


End file.
